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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22396690">A Life Not Wasted</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmea12/pseuds/emmea12'>emmea12</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 09:27:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,796</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22396690</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmea12/pseuds/emmea12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Of course I knew, sir. There was very little you did on that ship that I was not privy too. No amount of terrible lies could cover up such clandestine behavior. Not to me anyway. I’ve known you far too long to be fooled by the tricks you use on the others.” <br/>General Hux hadn't escaped the First Order more than he'd been dragged out of it, bleeding and half-dead, by his assistant Lieutenant Aurora Cooper. At least he didn't have to deal with Kylo Ren's temper anymore.<br/>Kylo Ren hadn't become Ben Solo more than he was given the choice between being Ben Solo and having Rey by his side or being Kylo Ren and having no one. At least he didn't have to deal with Hux's ego anymore. <br/>After the final battle at Exegol, Hux and Kylo both find themselves both dealing with a life they feel has been wasted, the mounting pressure of deciding what they want, and the presence of someone they thought they'd never have to see again.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Armitage Hux/Original Female Character(s), Kylo Ren/Rey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Life Not Wasted</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello! This is just me dealing with the devastation that canon brought to us with TROS. I feel like both Hux and Ben deserved to have their characters explored a little more and this is an attempt to do just that. Comments welcomed.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>    Lieutenant Aurora Cooper had more hours logged in flight simulations than any other non-pilot officer in the First Order. There was a reason for that: she was an unmitigated disaster in the pilot’s seat. Unlike most things, flying had never come easy to her. She didn’t possess the whip-like reflexes one needed to be successful as a fighter pilot and she didn’t have the spatial awareness to pilot large transport ships around anything smaller than large planets or suns. It was an uncommon demerit on her otherwise perfect academy record. Her flying instructor in school had called her hopeless which would have wounded her pride if she hadn’t very keenly been aware that it was true. General Hux however had seen it as a challenge.<br/>    Hux couldn’t have known that someday his insistence that she finish her days in the simulation room would save both of their lives, but here she was, 10 years later, now defected and shakily piloting a stolen ship on an unclear path towards a set of coordinates scrawled on a piece of paper that she’d found in her unconscious general’s pocket. In the matter of an hour her entire life had been changed and the only thing that kept her from succumbing to the stress was her academy training and the internal voice in her head (one that sounded strangely like Hux) telling her to just keep going.<br/>    Outer space was quiet when you weren’t on a massive ship filled with thousands of people. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she was anywhere there were only two hearts beating. She reckoned Hux’s office could be considered, but there were very often hoards of people coming and going for meetings and private audiences with the influential man she served. She and the general were really and truly alone for the first time since they’d met years ago, and he wasn’t even awake to laugh at her revelation. There would be no interruptions here. No comm calls, or meetings, or people who just had to speak to the general in the wee hours of the morning. It was just the two of them and for some reason the awareness of this overtook Aurora’s every sense.<br/>    Hux was too busy nearly dying on the floor in the back of the cramped and dirty ship with his shirt open and copious amounts of bacta slathered across the blaster bolt burn on his chest to worry about the social state of himself and his aide. Aurora was no medic, but as the general’s personal assistant she’d gone through a litany of classes to diversify her skills in order to best assist her general in any and all situations he found himself in. Unfortunately for her as well as the general, first-aid hadn’t been a large portion of those classes. She could do paperwork like a machine and relay commands as if she was the general herself. She could sew a stray button back onto his coat and she knew how to make his caf better than she knew how to make her own, but blood and the inner workings of the human body weren’t her strong suits. The occasion was rare that a general would not be around qualified medical personnel at any given time, so the topic had never really come up and the matter never pushed or rectified. However, now the fact was that Armitage Hux was no longer a general, and there were certainly no medical personnel around. Aurora had done her best by cleaning the wound and dressing it with as much bacta and bandages as she could fit but that was as far as her knowledge could take her with this particular injury. It would have to do until she could beg someone more qualified to take a look.<br/>    It had been hours since they had escaped. Aurora was able to input the coordinates she hoped were safe and had attended to the former general while the autopilot did a much better job than she could ever have done getting them to safety. After that, she was adrift with no direction of what to do until Hux woke up. He’d surely have an idea of what to do when he awakened, . There was rarely a moment that he didn’t have some sort of plan brewing. He could at least let her know where they were going. Until then, she would just have to entertain herself until something happened.<br/>    Several excruciating hours later the moans of a man in immensely sharp pain came from the back of the ship. “Kriff.” His voice was rough with disuse and the fog of unconsciousness lingered upon every one of his normally considerable faculties.<br/>    “General.” The sound of his cursing calmed the biggest fear that had settled in her heart: that the man simply would never wake. Aurora made her way through the cramped ship and lowered herself to her knees next to him. She tried to hide how immeasurably happy she was that he was awake. “How are you feeling?” She placed the back of her hand onto his forehead to feel for a fever. The man barely registered her touch at all.<br/>    “Fucking awful, Cooper. What the hell happened?” The exhaustion plastered across his face wasn’t his normal brand of weariness. This kind wasn’t caused by too many hours on the bridge, or cleaning up after Ren. This was bone-tired-nearly-dead fatigue mixed with the sharpness of near intolerable pain.<br/>Aurora stopped him gently when he went to sit up into a more dignified position. Her hand lightly pushed his shoulder back towards the ground. “I think you should just rest until we land. You’ve been shot and I did the best I could, but let’s not test my medical skills by you complicating your injury.”<br/>    Hux’s fingers grazed the bandages on his chest and he peered down to the stark whiteness that made even his pale skin looked tanned by contrast. “That bastard shot me,” he groaned. He slowly remembered the blaster bolt hitting him in the chest as his body flew backwards onto the shiny black floor of the bridge. He remembers his head cracking against the floor and nothing else afterwards.<br/>    “He did,” Aurora said. She peeled back the bandage and looked at the edges of the wound that already seemed to be positively reacting to the bacta. “At least that’s what Casey said.”<br/>    “Casey?”<br/>    “CS-6120, Sir. We have her to thank for noticing that you were still alive and finding me to handle the situation. If it wasn’t for her your body would probably have been thrown out of the airlock.”<br/>    Hux hummed and winced as the bandage was lowered back into place. “What did she tell you then? Besides that?” He was fishing for something that Aurora already knew.<br/>    “I know that Pryde suspected you to be the spy,” she answered truthfully. Her hand went to the back of Hux’s head and she felt gingerly to make sure that the bleeding had stopped. There was a considerable knot but no fresh blood. “I also know he was right, though I think his reaction was a little dramatic. There should have at least been a trial.” She removed her hands from his head and moved his hair out of his eyes without thinking. Normally that would have never been acceptable. Now with his blood dried on her uniform and skin, it seemed less taboo to offer this small comfort.<br/>    “You knew?” He was too tired to be surprised but he had truthfully believed he had been careful to avoid letting his treasonous actions be known to her. If it was discovered that Aurora had known, she would have been killed too, and it probably would have been done with great pain while he was forced to watch before he was killed afterward. The First Order did have quite the corner market on cruelty and the Supreme Leader would have made sure that it would have been both the worst and last moments of their lives.<br/>    The look Aurora shot him was withering. “Of course I knew, sir. There was very little you did on that ship that I was not privy too. No amount of terrible lies could cover up such clandestine behavior. Not to me anyway. I’ve known you far too long to be fooled by the tricks you use on the others.” She lowered herself further into a sitting position and pulled a water bottle from the emergency pack she had found in the small cargo hull of the ship during her hours of boredom. After taking a swig she handed it to Hux. “What are the coordinates I found in your pocket?”<br/>    Hux was reeling but regained his composure, or what little he still had, quickly after taking a drink of water and clearing his throat. “The Resistance base. Dameron slipped them to me before he and the other two left. In case I needed to get out. Is that where we are going?” Aurora nodded. “Very well then,” he sighed. “We’ll be prisoners of war, you know?” He didn’t look afraid, only weary already at the prospect of being held prisoner by the people he so vehemently fought against his entire life.<br/>    “Surely there will be some consideration to the fact that you’ve helped them?” Aurora asked. “There will be suspicions I assume but they won’t just summarily execute us on arrival I hope. That would be both in poor taste and strategically unsound on their part, though, when has a solid strategy ever been the Resistance’s modus operandi?”<br/>    “We’ll be interrogated,” Hux further explained. “I’m not sure of the methods they’ll use as the information will be forthcoming, but they are aware of the First Order’s proclivity to violence in the search for information. I’d imagine there will be an amount of retribution from those less level thinking members of the Resistance. I will of course try to shield you from it as much as possible, with the assurance that as a simple office worker you had very little working knowledge of the actual policy and procedure of the First Order. I’m not sure how much good that will do, though.”<br/>    A snort came out of Aurora before she could stop it causing one of Hux’s eyebrows to tweak upward. “I’m sorry, sir, but I think out of the two of us, I’m in far better shape to be interrogated. I’ve also been heavily trained in resisting all forms of interrogation. I’m sure that nothing the Resistance members could dream up would be half as bad as what the Academy did to me.” By Academy, Aurora meant Hux’s father, but Brendol wasn’t a topic either of the two talked about. Not willingly of course. Hux’s jaw clenched at the thought of his father interrogating her, touching her in any way. Bile rose in his throat. “In fact, I have half a mind to knock you out when we get there, beg for your revival and hand myself over. I can get the worst bit over. By the time they are done with me, they’ll know everything and they might go easy on you.”<br/>    The sheer implication shocked Hux. His gaze became hard and challenging. “You wouldn’t dare. You will not put yourself in undue danger. You will let me handle this, and that is an order.” He tried his best to give her the look he gave other officers who he was trying to intimate. Unluckily for him, she was, like she said, wholly immune to his tactics.<br/>    “Orders don’t mean anything anymore, sir. We are both lost to the First Order. We are but two people in space with lots of information and considerable targets on our backs.” The words hit Aurora’s heartstrings like a mallet onto the face of a gong. Everything she had worked for in the twenty-eight years of her life were gone. All of the pain and sacrifice she’d made for the ideals of control and order were for very little. She rubbed her sternum as if it would help ease the pain in her chest.<br/>    “They do with regards to us, Lieutenant. I am the murderer of billions. I will face the wrath and you will endear yourself to them. I hear their general has an inclination of tucking lost little girls under her wing if they act gently around her. That’s what you’ll do.” He set the water bottle he had clutched in his hand to the side and forced himself to sit up through the pain in order to look at her eye-to-eye. “You will bat your eyelashes and behave as if you were enslaved by me. Pity can be our friend here.”<br/>    “With all due respect, sir,” Aurora said forcefully. “Kindly fuck off.” Hux couldn’t erase the shock from his face at her words. “If you think I will stand idly by while you are brought to some false sense of justice: you are a fool. And we both know that’s not true. And again, you are a fool if you think that will not have at least heard of my contributions to your rise to power, and subsequent success and failures. I’m not exactly a nameless, faceless officer anymore. I’ve been by your side since before you were a Commander, sir. Ten years of service. They’re not stupid, and frankly, my pride will not allow me to act like some scared little girl who was kidnapped by the big bad man. So, again: Fuck. Off.” Aurora spat the words “little girl” like they had offended her more than the suggestion that she let him take the brunt of whatever waited for them at the Resistance base.<br/>    Hux had infrequently seen Aurora reach this level of anger, and it had very rarely been him at the other end of said anger. It was almost always vitriol about Kylo Ren that dripped from her mouth. Occasionally it would be someone else, a subordinate who hadn’t done their job and had affected the ship negatively. This kind of unbridled anger was new to him.<br/>    “You have no duty to me, Aurora. Not anymore.” The words seemed to be ripped out of Hux violently but not by any force other than his own desperation. Aurora wasn’t sure if they were meant to convince her or hurt her enough to forsake him. Whatever his intention, she saw through it and promptly ignored it in favor of further argument.<br/>    “A sense of duty is not the only thing that ties people together, sir.”<br/>    The silence in the wake of her words was suffocating. The air seemed to stop moving, and the hull echoed with the implication. Hux’s gaze was captured by the pink in her face creeping into her hairline as the seconds passed. There was a spattering a dried blood, his blood, at the column of her throat and he found himself having to tear his eyes away from it. Her eyes, he found, were glassy and her hands played with a rip in her pants. Hux idly thought that the story of how she managed their escape must have been more involved than she’d earlier implied. Something terribly frightening bloomed in his chest at the thought of her dodging blaster fire while she dragged his body up the loading ramp of his ship. She must have been terrified, but as always, she’d gotten what she needed to do done with very little effort on his part.<br/>    Minutes of uncomfortable silence and stolen glances later, the anxiety of it pushed Aurora off of the cliff she’d been standing on.<br/>    “Besides, there is no way any rational thinking person would think that you are capable of running the First Order on your own. You would have died years ago from self neglect or drowned in a sea of paperwork.” Her words were meant to lighten the air, but they did nothing to distract the general who looked like he was thinking at an almost impossible rate. His eyes darted from her hands to her face and then back to her hands without pausing for more than a couple seconds. His fists clenched at his sides and Aurora could almost hear his internal voice screaming at him. He looked horrified.<br/>    “Maybe,” Hux cleared his throat, “you should get some rest before we land. You probably haven’t slept since yesterday.” Aurora could tell he was trying to use the commanding tone he was used to using and usually she’d push back a little. She wasn’t sure if she pushed him now that he’d ever recover. Obediently she nodded and closed her eyes if only for the purpose of getting that look on his face out of her head for a little while.</p>
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